


one more chain

by Polexia_Aphrodite



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, past Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 09:51:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polexia_Aphrodite/pseuds/Polexia_Aphrodite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the death of Steve Rogers, Bucky and Darcy learn to cope and heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one more chain

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by some (likely untrue) rumors that floated around a while back about Chris Evans leaving the MCU franchise and the franchise transitioning from Steve Rogers as Cap to Bucky Barnes' Captain America. So this is just a little what-if fic, playing with that scenario (and adding Darcy, of course). 
> 
> The title comes from the Rufus Wainwight song _The Maker Makes_ , which iTunes tells me I listened to about 100 times while writing this. So, if you're looking for something to listen to while reading, it's on YouTube [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh-q76T4lEg). And there's a graphic that goes with it [here](http://hardboiledmeggs.tumblr.com/post/71348948708/well-not-much-else-is-going-on-today-so-i-posted).
> 
> Hope you all like it.

*******

When Steve Rogers dies – killed in action – it’s just too much for some of them to believe. Most of the Avengers, and the partners, colleagues, and hangers-on who surround them, swath themselves in a deep denial, insisting to themselves and each other that there must be some way to justify or make right what happened – to make his death, like his life, symbolic and meaningful. Bucky gets it – it’s hard to imagine him gone. He had been so healthy, so strong. And he had been the best of them.

The most acknowledgement of the _loss_ comes in the form of condolences, dutifully doled out to the two people who find Steve’s death the most meaningless: Bucky, who had been his friend, and Darcy, who had been his lover.

The two of them never went public, but everyone knew. It was obvious enough from the way Steve brightened whenever Darcy came around, from his shy, lovestruck looks and the way he always found excuses to touch her. And Darcy had let all of her soft feelings for Steve show, too – in the dazzling smiles she’d give him or the way she’d walk next to him with her hand hooked around his elbow.

There’s a kind of solidarity that comes with being the two people the world thinks are most deserving of pity after Steve’s gone. And there’s a comfort and unity in knowing that they were the ones who orbited around Steve most closely. It makes some of the heaviness in Bucky’s chest seem a little easier to bear.

Bucky hears a lot of comments about how well Darcy’s taking it – Steve’s death – but Bucky knows better. He sees the numb, emptiness behind her eyes. He sees that her shock hasn’t yet given way to real grief. He’s far ahead of her – too used to dealing with death to dwell long on it. For nearly a century he and Steve have lost and found each other; the finality of _this_ loss, the knowledge that there won’t be another reunion is almost a relief. There’s nothing left to wait for, now. It’s over, at last.

He takes Darcy with him to go through Steve’s apartment – to decide what should be kept, and what should be donated or thrown away. They don’t say much. She doesn’t cry, so neither does he.

Bucky waits until Darcy heads to the bathroom to check all the usual places for pornography, or whatever Steve wouldn’t have wanted her to see – underneath the clothes in his bureau, his nightstand, a quick sweep at the back of his closet and under the bed. It seems like the kind of thing a pal ought to do. But he comes up emptyhanded, and he curses himself for even bothering to look.

They end up with a stack of boxes for the Salvation Army, and a few for the Smithsonian. They divvy up his sketchbooks – modern ones for Darcy and older ones for Bucky. She keeps a few shirts, Bucky keeps his dog tags, and they part with a pair of quiet _goodbyes_.

*****

Darcy lives down the hall from him. They’d both started on the outside fringes of SHIELD and the Avengers, and Tony had granted them both Stark Tower apartments to make them feel a little less orphaned. They aren’t alone, of course – they share the residential floor with Thor and Jane, Bruce and Betty, and a host of SHIELD consultants and Avengers recruits who pass through New York. 

They never talk much, and Steve’s name never passes between them, but what they do together feels like coping. They run through Central Park side-by-side, with jogging shoes on and earbuds firmly in place. They stay up late eating junk food and watching trashy television from the comfort of Bucky’s sofa. They play endless, silent games of chess or Parcheesi or Scrabble. They go days without seeing anyone but each other, doing whatever they can to wear out their minds and bodies enough that they won’t have to think about _him_.

Bucky learns to read her – he learns what each angle of her mouth means, and how to translate her glances and gestures. He sees that she’s strong to a fault – preferring to be hard-nosed, sarcastic or distracted instead of sad – but he supposes that he is, too. He supposes that Steve would want them to _feel_ things, to come to terms with the loss openly and honestly, but Steve’s gone, so they muddle through the best they can.

Bucky’d never spent much time around the two of them before Steve died; Steve’s propensity for mouthy brunettes matched his own, and he’d known better than to risk feeling anything for her beyond a vague awareness of her existence.

He starts to see what Steve must have seen in her – not just because she’s beautiful, but because she’s sharp as a tack and funny as hell. Because she beats him at poker and laughs in his face. Because she makes the world’s best chocolate chip cookies and always knows which celebrities are dating. Because she’s serious and irreverent and sweet and tough at the same time. Because she’s perfect.

It feels dangerous now – now that Steve’s gone and all they have is each other. Bucky feels the magnetic pull of her – the thing that makes him want to hold onto her and never let go. He’s not sure what to do about it, but somehow the idea of doing anything about it feels inappropriate and like something that would push her away from him forever. Now that Steve’s dead, his greatest fear becomes waking up to find that Darcy hates him. He knows that he couldn’t bear – couldn’t _survive_ – losing her, too.

*****

It makes sense when SHIELD approaches Bucky about taking on Steve’s mantle. The persona – the Captain America _thing_ – is important, Fury explains to him. It means something to people. America needs it – needs _him_ – and surely it’s what Steve would have wanted. It all makes perfect sense. It still turns his stomach, but he tells Fury that he’ll do it.

When they issue him the new uniform, he takes it back to his apartment to try on. He doesn’t know what it will feel like, or how he’ll react – to wear the stars and stripes that were never meant for him – but he’s determined that it shouldn’t be seen by anyone else. Not until he’s ready, until he’s come to terms with wearing it himself.

The suit isn’t exactly the same, and he’s grateful for it. His shoulders and most of his torso are swathed in red, white, and blue, but the rest is black. It feels right – like mourning.

He’s just gotten the suit on, looking at himself in his bedroom mirror, the hardwood floor cold under his bare feet, when he hears a knock at the door. Bucky panics for a short second, then sprints through his apartment, cracking open the front door just wide enough to see Darcy standing in the hall.

“Hey,” she smiles. She looks a little tired, and a little happy to see him. Bucky has to pull himself away from thinking about how lovely she looks, with cascades of dark curls pulled over her shoulders and red lips and wide blue eyes.

“Hi.” 

He tucks himself behind the door. It looks suspicious as hell, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to spring this on her.

Darcy rolls her eyes. “Coulson already told me,” she curls her fingers around the door, “C’mon. I wanna see.”

Bucky hesitates, then steps back and pulls the door open. Darcy enters, sets her purse on the floor, and closes the door behind her with a quiet click. Her face is unreadable, and just when Bucky’s gotten so used to being able to read her.

“It’s a good fit.”

He smirks, trying to lighten the mood, “’s a little tight.”

Darcy frowns, then moves behind him, straightening a mess of bunched fabric until the uniform settles easier across his shoulders. She tells him to put on the boots, gloves and cowl, and smiles when she sees him fully decked out.

“You know he’d want you to have this,” she tells him, looking up and meeting his eyes.

Bucky has a feeling a lot of people are going to tell him this, but somehow it only feels right to accept Steve’s blessing from Darcy, who had loved him – _really_ loved him – too. 

“I want you to have it, too,” she almost whispers, “You should—“

Her lips purse; there’s a sudden glassiness in her eyes that she quickly blinks away. She steps towards him suddenly, winding her arms around his waist and pressing her cheek to his chest.

It takes him by surprise. The comfort they’ve given each other has never been physical – not like this. He’s always been too afraid of touching her, of hurting her, of offending her. He brings his gloved hands up to her back.

She lets him hold her for a long moment. It feels so much better than he wants it to – remembering what it’s like to touch and be touched. He wonders what it feels like for her.

Darcy leans back and settles her palms against his chest.

“All right,” she pats her hand once, twice, “Get outta the monkey suit. I brought movies and popcorn.”

As Bucky retreats to his bedroom to find sweats and a t-shirt, he can’t keep the dopey grin off his face.

*****

Half a year passes before he sees her cry for the first time. Summer’s faded into fall, and cold-and-flu season hits SHIELD hard. Jane catches something from one of her interns, she passes it to Darcy, who passes it to Bucky. They hole up in his apartment, forcing each other to drink fluids and rest.

By the third day, Bucky’s mostly over it – all the mad scientists who tested on him over the years never quite made him into Steve, but his immune system still works a little better than average. Darcy’s still bogged down in sickness though, sprawled on his couch, creating a mountain of used Kleenexes while he sits next to her with her feet on his lap.

“This just…sucks,” she announces halfway through a made-for-TV movie neither of them are paying attention to.

He looks over at her, “What’s that?”

“Just…everything,” she sits up, and he can see that her eyes are teary and rimmed in pink.

He knows what this is – her frustration and helplessness boiling over. It’s certainly been coming for long enough; being sick just tripped the wire.

“C’mon, Darcy,” he pleads, handing her a tissue, “Cryin’s not gonna help.” He can already hear her sniffling getting worse.

“Stop it,” she bats his hand away. Tears stream down her cheeks; her face has gone red. “Don’t tell me how to be. I hate being sick. I hate that Steve’s gone. I hate being alone. Everything’s just _wrong_.”

Her voice is thick, almost unrecognizable. She chokes out a few strangled sobs through the congestion in her chest.

Bucky freezes for a long moment. He’s never dealt well with crying women – angry women, sure, women full of passion and fury and violence, but not women with this deep well of grief spilling out in front of him.

She rails against him and the universe for a few more minutes before she goes quiet. He can hear her snort and wheeze and struggle. She’s done it, now – let her tears and panic stuff her up even worse than she was before.

“Bucky,” she gasps, with her brow furrowed and her hand pressed to her chest, “I can’t breathe, Bucky.”

That sparks something inside him, something urgent and primal. He stands, grabs her by the wrist and pulls her down the hall to the bathroom. He pushes her inside, closes the door and turns the shower on – full blast and as hot as it’ll go. She looks at him with wide eyes, shocked, like she isn’t sure what he’ll do next.

He pulls the toilet seat lid down, sits, and pulls her into his lap. His right hand spreads wide and warm on her back. His other hand curls around her wrist. 

“You gotta calm down,” he croons, and he feels her curl against him, “The steam’ll knock it loose.”

The room fills with fog, clouding up the mirror over the sink and wrapping them both in a warm mist. Darcy slips an arm around his waist and fists her hand in his shirt. Her forehead presses against his neck. Bucky can hear her breathing ease.

“’m sorry,” she murmurs, reaching across him for a wad of toilet paper to dab against her eyes and nose.

“It’s all right,” Bucky says, turning his face against her hair, “Used to do this for Steve. Always had trouble with his lungs before the serum fixed him up.”

Darcy smiles. “You let him sit on your lap, too?”

Bucky shrugs. His metal thumb strokes against the inside of her wrist. “He used’ta be smaller.”

She angles her head to look up at him and brings up a hand to trace his collarbone through his shirt. Bucky can feel it humming through her like electricity – how much she misses Steve, how she holds herself on the edge between moving on and collapsing into her own despair.

“You know you’re not alone.”

She nods, “I know.”

Darcy shifts, winding her arm around his neck and pulling herself up until her lips meet the hollow of his cheek, the corner of his mouth. Her temple rests against his. 

“Neither are you.”

*****

She stays at his apartment after that, falling asleep in his bed, night after night. He never asks her to stay, or tells her to leave, just curls next to her, pressing his front to her back and slinging an arm around her waist, keeping his hips pulled away from her, because it seems like the gentlemanly thing to do. 

Bucky tries hard to let it be something that they do as friends – falling asleep and waking up together. But the fact that Darcy – _Darcy_ – is the first and last thing he sees every day makes him feel more human than he has in years and years.

And then one night, without warning, she turns in his arms and kisses him. She feels _sure_ in his arms, like she knows exactly what she’s doing, but Bucky, fool that he is, doubts her anyway. When she guides his (real) hand between her legs, he convinces himself that it’s only because it’s been over a year since Steve died – over a year since she’s gotten any pleasure from a man. That’s all.

But the way she sighs his name into his skin, the way her fingers weave into his hair, the insistent press of her mouth against his, tells a different story. It gives him too much hope to feel how responsive she is, and when he finally pushes inside her, with his hands in her hair and her legs wrapped around his waist, he can’t stop himself from telling her the truth – that he loves her, that he wants to take care of her, that he couldn’t bear it if she were with anyone else.

Darcy just smiles up at him and frames his face in her hands. Bucky’s hips go still against hers as she tells him her truth, too. She tells him how she first knew she loved him that afternoon in the bathroom, when she had been so sick and wrapped up in her own pain. She tells him about the darkness he pulled her out of, and how much stronger he made her.

Later, after they’ve worked through the urgency and desperate declarations of their first coupling, and the slow, satisfying thrill of the second, they lie together in a tangle of bedsheets, sweat-slicked and sated.

Bucky knows this won’t bring Steve back – the two of them together – but, somehow, he feels less far away.


End file.
